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67Authenticity in KurosawaJournal of Value Inquiry 33 (2): 227-237. 1999.Much of the contemporary philosophical literature on authenticity is secondary work on figures like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus. I would like to find a different voice by searching for inspiration in the artistic expression that the theme of authenticity has found in the oeuvre of the Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa. To be authentic is to be true to ourselves. But what is it to be true to ourselves? The locution suggests that authenticity has something to do with the …Read more
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225A response to PrelecIn Adam Oliver (ed.), Essays in Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 228-33. 2013.At the heart of Drazen Prelec’s chapter is the distinction between outcome utility and diagnostic utility. There is a particular distinction in the literature on causal networks (Pearl 2000), namely the distinction between observing and intervening, that maps onto Prelec’s distinction between diagnostic and outcome utility. I will explore the connection between both frameworks.
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196Minimizing the threat of a positive majority deficit in two-tier voting systems with equipopulous unitsPublic Choice 132 (1-2): 75-94. 2013.The mean majority deficit in a two-tier voting system is a function of the partition of the population. We derive a new square-root rule: For odd-numbered population sizes and equipopulous units the mean majority deficit is maximal when the member size of the units in the partition is close to the square root of the population size. Furthermore, within the partitions into roughly equipopulous units, partitions with small even numbers of units or small even-sized units yield high mean majority de…Read more
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251Affirmative action - a Polish example?In Robert Solomon (ed.), Above the Bottom Line - An Introduction to Business Ethics, Harcourt. pp. 337-9. 1994.I argue that the post-1990 practice of giving leadership positions in companies to non-ex-communists is an example of affirmative action.
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100A Dutch book for group decision-making?In Benedikt Löwe, Eric Pacuit & Jan-Willem Romeijn (eds.), Foundations of the Formal Sciences Vi: Probabilistic Reasoning and Reasoning With Probabilities. Studies in Logic, College Publication. pp. 91-101. 2008.The Puzzle of the Hats is a betting arrangement which seems to show that a Dutch book can be made against a group of rational players with common priors who act in the common interest and have full trust in the other players’ rationality. But we show that appearances are misleading—no such Dutch book can be made. There are four morals. First, what can be learned from the puzzle is that there is a class of situations in which credences and betting rates diverge. Second, there is an analogy betwee…Read more
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51Welfarist evaluations of decision rules for boards of representativesSocial Choice and Welfare 29 (4): 581-608. 2007.We consider a decision board with representatives who vote on proposals on behalf of their constituencies. We look for decision rules that realize utilitarian and (welfarist) egalitarian ideals. We set up a simple model and obtain roughly the following results. If the interests of people from the same constituency are uncorrelated, then a weighted rule with square root weights does best in terms of both ideals. If there are perfect correlations, then the utilitarian ideal requires proportional w…Read more
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140Bets on Hats: On Dutch Books Against Groups, Degrees of Belief as Betting Rates, and Group-ReflectionEpisteme 8 (3): 281-300. 2011.The Puzzle of the Hats is a puzzle in social epistemology. It describes a situation in which a group of rational agents with common priors and common goals seems vulnerable to a Dutch book if they are exposed to different information and make decisions independently. Situations in which this happens involve violations of what might be called the Group-Reflection Principle. As it turns out, the Dutch book is flawed. It is based on the betting interpretation of the subjective probabilities, but ig…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Economics |
Moral Psychology |
Formal Epistemology |
Epistemic Paradoxes |